This disclosure relates generally to systems for the preparation of printed items. More particularly, the present disclosure relates to systems for print products, where the preparation for each print product varies in accordance with selected values of pre-determined parameters.
Many print jobs prepared by modern print shops must be printed as multiple print runs due to differing specifications for each of the print runs. For example, the print job may require the use of different paper stocks for the different print run, or that portions of the print job be printed in black and white while other portions of the print job be printed in color. Completion of the print job therefore requires that the printed pages from the several print runs must be separated from printed pages for other print runs, matching those printed pages to the print job, collating the printed pages and packaging the print job for delivery to the customer.
The tasks recited above may each include a number of sub-tasks. For example, each print run requires supplying a set of printing instructions intended for printing a particular portion of the print job document to the printer device and then printing the document portion in accordance with the supplied sets of printing instructions. A number of mutually different processing instructions may be supplied to a station of an apparatus for assembling print jobs, which processing instructions are each associated with particular sets of the sets of printing instructions.
In one conventional method, documents are printed and further processed in accordance with specific processing instructions associated with those printed documents, without the necessity of providing the documents with special indicia for controlling the further processing of those documents.
Because the printed documents are not scanned in order to read the associated processing instructions, however, the possibility exists that due to errors in the printing of the documents or in the transport of printed documents from the printer to the station, instead of an intended document, another document, which has been printed before or after the intended document and differs therefrom, is processed in accordance with the processing instructions associated with the intended document or in combination with other documents associated with the intended document. Such errors can occur, for instance, in that a document jams or in that a double sheet is supplied to the printer.
As a result of such errors, it is possible, for instance, that a set of personalized documents lacks a last document, which is then included in the next set, intended for a different addressee. It is also possible, for instance, that a bank statement is added to a letter which is addressed to a person other than the person to whose bank account the statement relates. It will be clear that these are extremely undesired consequences. In this connection, it is particularly disadvantageous that an error may have an effect on the assembly of subsequent postal items without this being noticed
In another conventional method, documents are provided with special marks that represent codes associated with processing instructions that are stored in a memory. Each time a document is supplied to the assembling apparatus, the special marks of that document are read. In response to the code represented by the special mark as read the processing instructions corresponding with that code are read from the memory and the document is processed accordingly. Although the special marks are relatively small in comparison with special marks directly representing processing instructions, it is necessary, in determining the lay-out of the documents, to leave some space clear for the special marks, which requires additional coordination. A so-called bled-off printing is often impossible. Further such special marks disturb the appearance of documents and give the document an impersonal character.